by Kathy Lyons
She threw up her hands in disgust and glared at the ceiling as she obviously tried to get a hold of herself. Hank wanted to reassure her. He wanted to suggest maybe it was on the backup or the server or the cloud, but he knew it wouldn’t help.
Thanks to the magic, the data was gone. He knew it as surely as he knew his own name.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She glared at him. “It’s the…the magical force thing?”
Hank nodded. It didn’t make sense, but this wasn’t the first electronic glitch that had helped hide shifters.
“Fucking damn magic!” she spat. “I’m so done with it.” Then she grabbed her tablet and jerked open the hospital room door. She was about to stomp out when she noticed the circle of medical personnel and security who stood there. “What?” she gasped, obviously startled.
“Dr. Lu, is everything all right?”
“No!” she snapped, and then she abruptly moderated her tone. “I mean, yes, of course everything’s fine. Brittany’s cured. She’s fine. Let her go home.”
A cheer went up from everyone standing there.
“But how?” one of the men asked. Dr. Thorton, according to his ID. “How was she cured?”
Everyone looked at Cecilia, himself included. How to explain Brittany’s miraculous recovery?
She grimaced, looking defeated even as she spoke with clear authority. “I don’t think she had it in the first place.”
“Of course, she did. Look at her files.”
“Don’t bother,” Cecilia said, her voice tight. “It’s corrupted. We’ll have to try to reconstruct it from memory.”
The men looked at Cecilia, then again back at Brittany. “So she never had the Flu to begin with?”
“Well, obviously she had a flu,” a nurse said. “Just not the Detroit Flu.” The woman smiled at Brittany. “Honey, you are so lucky. You dodged a big bullet here.”
Literally given that the two security guards were just now putting their guns away.
“So what do we do now? Just discharge her?” Dr. Thorton asked.
Cecilia blew out a breath. “She’s fine. She’s healthy.” She glanced back at the Brittany and her parents. “Hank will get you all the information you need.” She dropped her hands to her side. “I’m going back to the lab.”
She walked away, her steps clipped and angry. Behind her, the other doctors were still talking. “So our one good case isn’t a case after all? They all die?”
“Looks that way,” Dr. Thorton said. “Bloody hell.”
Hank watched everyone disperse. He knew from experience it would feel weirdly surreal. People going through motions as if nothing life shattering had happened here. As if they couldn’t wait to get rid of the strange people who challenged their grip on reality. And not a one commented that Abby was wearing a blanket around her torso rather than a blouse.
All back to normal. Denial or magic or something else. He didn’t know, but he’d seen it before. And now Cecilia saw how the shifter world survived in the shadows.
Clearly, she wanted nothing to do with it.
Chapter 18
Cecilia could barely breathe. She made it to the lab where Dennis was again asleep on the couch. The man could sleep anytime, anywhere, and through anything. But since he often worked through the night, she couldn’t complain about his work ethic. Just be jealous of his peace of mind.
How did this happen? How was there magic in the world that nobody saw? And when solid, scientific research could bring it to light, bullshit happened. They shouldn’t have lost all the data. Not from simply unplugging the machine. At least they had video. Unless…
She crossed to the monitor at her station and pressed the keys to bring up Brittany’s room. Sure enough, there was the whole family packing up, hugging each other, and getting ready to set off on their new shifter-aware adventure.
She hit another key for the playback. She wanted to go back an hour and see everything in minute detail. Every…
She wasn’t even surprised when the recording showed snow. Lots and lots of white noise static with no image.
She dropped down onto her stool in defeat and started to rationally, logically consider the possibilities. Shifters existed. She was biologically and romantically drawn to one of them. The Detroit Flu was a shifter poison that activated magical DNA, if you had it. Most of them went crazy except for the lucky few like Brittany who joined the magical ranks. And, by the way, evidence of this truth was zapped somehow. Pfft. Gone.
She took a deep breath and spoke aloud to her monitor. There really was only one logical answer. “I need a CT scan. I’ve got a brain tumor.”
Dennis shifted on the couch. He answered without even opening his eyes. “You’re not crazy. You’re just brain fried.”
She frowned at her coworker. “No really. Dennis, I’m seeing people change into animals. I’m watching data disappear in front of my eyes. And I’m hot for a guy I’d never go for normally. It’s a tumor. It has to be.”
He opened his eyes and blinked them wearily at her. “I’m too tired for games.”
“I’m not playing.”
He sighed and shut his eyes. “You don’t have to create a brain tumor to be taken off this case. Just invent an emergency at home. Or call in your vacation days. You can be out of here in a few hours.”
“The city’s quarantined.”
“Fine. There are really important samples that need to be analyzed in Atlanta. Highly contagious. Must be hand delivered.”
She glared at him. “Are you trying to get me fired?”
“Yes. Then I can have your job and with all your special perks.”
She had no special perks and wasn’t even paid as well as he was, and they both knew it. “Dennis, I want to have this man’s babies. Like I want to ride him for the next hundred years in between raising his children.”
He shifted on the couch, stretching his legs into a more comfortable position. “So you’re horny. Who isn’t?”
“Me. Ever. Not when there’re lives to save. A flu to end.”
He snorted as he folded his arms across his chest. “Welcome to puberty. I knew you’d get here eventually.”
She threw up her arms. “I’ve been through puberty, thank you very much. And have no need to revisit—”
He shifted and glared at her, his expression annoyed but not unkind. “You’re fried, Dr. Lu. As in sizzled in a pan and done. So go. Get your freak on. Ride this guy until you both pass out from exhaustion because you’re not doing us any good here.”
She stared at him. “He can turn into a bear, Dennis. A big black bear.”
He snorted. “Never would have guessed you’d be into costume kink, but whatever. Yabba dabba do!”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s The Flintstones.”
He lifted his head a moment as he obviously sorted through his childhood memories. “Oh right. Play ball!”
“That’s Yogi Berra.”
“Fine,” he huffed. “Only you can prevent forest fires.” Then he rolled onto his side on the couch, firmly putting his back to her. “Kill the lights when you leave, will you?”
“You have a hotel room, you know.”
“Yeah, but it’s right next to yours and I don’t want to hear you being smarter than the average bear.”
She stared at Dennis. Damn it, she was actually in crisis here. Logically it made way more sense that she had a brain tumor than that shifters existed and magic corrupted data files. But she knew what she’d seen. She knew Abby had changed into a bear. Hank, too. And then there were the werewolves and Sammy and…
She dropped her head in her hands. “I need a CT scan.”
Dennis didn’t answer, but Hank did. She hadn’t heard him come in, but the big man was incredibly quiet. Even his voice was soft, soothing her ragged nerves.
“Let me take you out to dinner.”
His hand was warm on her shoulder, big and comforting. She felt it like a drop of oil on a turbulent sea. It expanded acros
s her churning thoughts, quieting them though she didn’t know how. Normally when she was upset, she hated it when people touched her. But not Hank. She wanted to crawl up inside him and stay there forever. Instead, she thought about dinner.
“Is there anything still open?”
“I can cook.”
Of course, he could. He was the most perfect man ever.
“I don’t even know if you’re real,” she said. “Maybe I’m hallucinating you.”
Dennis groaned from the coach. “He’s real. Go away. Get your freak on.”
She dropped her head against Hank’s large, comforting chest. “What do you think?” she asked.
“About what?”
She tilted her head up. She saw his broad shoulders and large, dark face. Never in a million years would she have predicted being attracted to a man like him. He wasn’t an academic. He was a man of few words, and God knew everyone in her circle talked until forced to shut up. He was a building superintendent in a not-so-spectacular area of Detroit. An army medic and, she now guessed, a Zen master. None of that added up to anything she’d ever imagined in a man. And yet, looking at him now, she wanted to kiss him with everything in her. Worse, she wanted to go to bed by his side and wake up with him in the morning. She wanted to hear about his days and could think of no one better beside her when she wrestled with her own demons. She wanted him forever and always.
What was that if not a brain tumor? And yet, part of her didn’t care.
“So do you want to…um…get our freak on?” she asked.
His eyes blazed hot and his nostrils flared, but there was no other indication that he’d even heard her. She wasn’t sure he breathed.
“Hank?”
“Yes.”
She frowned at him. Was that a Yes, I want to get our freak on? Or a Yes, what are you asking me? She opened her mouth to ask him to clarify because honestly—brain tumor here—she needed things very clear. But her words were stopped when his hand touched her face. He was a large man and his hand was no different but she hadn’t realized just how gently he could touch her.
His fingertips barely skimmed her skin and left a tingling wake as he skated along her jaw. Then his thumb stroked across her cheeks to her mouth. She didn’t even think he touched her lips, but they plumped and tingled just from the thought. And from the dark intensity in his eyes as he watched her.
Her fears shorted out. Brain tumor? Psychotic break? Magic was real? All those confusing thoughts kept screaming, but she couldn’t hear them when he looked at her like that. When he leaned down as she stretched up to him.
Their breath mingled, but again, he didn’t touch her. He just breathed her in as she ached for him.
“Please,” she whispered.
He closed the distance between them, but he didn’t press deep. Lip to lip now, he brushed back and forth as her breath caught and her head dropped back. His other hand caught her, supporting her head as he pressed deeper, harder against her mouth. In that moment, she opened all of herself to him. Her heart, her head, and her body, and he thrust inside with a hunger that matched her own.
He plundered her mouth and she dueled with him without restraint. Animal hunger. Desperate passion. She had no words for this, no other experience that matched the need that pounded through her blood. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders, drawing him closer as she stretched higher.
His tongue became wilder then. The thrust and parry seemed harder now, more powerful as he owned her mouth, but she didn’t give way. As he started to take from her, her passion roared through and suddenly she was dueling with him as if her life depended on it. Her life felt poised in the balance as she thrust and took from his tongue, his mouth, his hunger.
She clutched his shoulders harder. She used him to pull herself up along his torso. She even curled a leg around his as she tried to climb up for a better angle. His right hand left her face, dropping down to her thigh as she wrapped herself around him.
Need clawed at her, irrational and overpowering. She dove into it, throwing away her rationality as if it meant nothing. All she needed was him. Right now. Right here.
She would have done it, too. She would have ripped off her clothes right here while Dennis pretended to sleep six feet away. She would have, but Hank kept control. Where before he was holding her against him, pressing the bulge of his hot penis against her groin, now he gripped her hard and pushed her back.
She didn’t want to go. She fought him, straining to keep them connected, but he was stronger and relentless. He held her back while she whimpered in distress.
“Not here,” he said.
“On-call room?” she asked.
“No.” He swallowed and took an unsteady step backward. Again, she tried to keep him close, but he refused though his gaze seemed to burn. “I’ll drive. Your hotel?”
She nodded and headed for the door on shaky legs. He remembered her tote bag, which held purse and tablet. And while Dennis muttered an amused, “Yabba dabba do!” she flipped the lights off.
“Still The Flintstones,” she returned as she shut the door. Then linking her fingers with Hank, they headed to his car.
Neither spoke much on the drive, though he attempted conversation twice. The first time, he said, “Do you want to talk about this?”
“No.”
Then five minutes later, he tried again. “We don’t have to—”
“Yes, we do. It’s the magic, right?” Or the brain tumor.
He looked at her, his gaze serious. “On my side, yes. You’re still free. You can still say no.”
Could she? She didn’t think so. Not with this need clawing inside her. Her face must have said as much because he shook his head.
“You aren’t magical,” he said firmly. “You don’t have to feel this way.”
“But I do feel like this.”
His expression tightened. For a moment she thought she saw joy, fierce and powerful. But a second later it was locked down and hidden away. A statue of Buddha had more expression than he did. And then he asked one last question.
“What if…” He halted as he turned a corner. “What about the baby?”
Not a baby. He’d said the baby as if a child was a foregone conclusion if they did this.
She closed her eyes and dropped her head back against the seat. The idea of carrying his child thrilled her. And that confused her. In her mind’s eye, she was looking at a serious little boy or a giggling little girl. One would play with a chemistry set, another would tear after a soccer ball. And she had no idea which child would do what. She thought of holidays and birthday parties. Of baby snuggles and that moment when Hank brought home a puppy. All those scenes flashed through her head and she wanted it. Oh God, how she wanted it.
But she couldn’t say that aloud. She was a career girl. She’s spent most of her life in study just so she could have this job with the CDC ferreting out the secrets of stubborn viruses and deadly fungi. Bacteria were almost boring because she understood them so well, but there were always more mysteries to solve, more contagions to conquer. She loved her job with an all-consuming passion.
Except for right now when the passion was completely focused on him.
“You sure I’m not magical?” she said. It certainly felt like she’d been taken over by something.
He shrugged. “Not in the way I am.” Then he repeated his words loudly. Firmly. “You are not bound by this.”
Yeah, she was. She already felt the link between them. Solid chains that heated her blood and made her womb ache to be filled.
“I want this,” she said firmly. Not just the sex, but the whole thing. Husband, kids, white picket fence—whole shebang. She just hadn’t expected it to happen this fast and with a man she’d only met yesterday. Brain tumor or magic didn’t matter. She wanted him, so she pointed to the extended stay hotel parking lot. “Turn here. My room’s in the back.” She had a kitchen, a desk/sitting area, and a very large bed.
He didn’t say anything more as
he parked. She hopped out immediately, her keycard in hand. She was inside in a moment, already stripping out of her clothes. He followed a step behind, quietly shutting the door as he watched her toss aside tunic, bra, leggings, and panties. She was naked beside her bed within seconds, and it felt so good.
Then she turned to wait for him.
He stood there at the door. He hadn’t moved and yet she thought she could hear his heart racing and his breath short and quick. She could see the bulge in his jeans and knew how very large and hot his penis was. There were things she wanted to do to him, but it all culminated with him inside her. With the pounding release and the grasping pull of her womb as she took his seed inside.
“We do this,” he finally said, “we do it my way.”
“Any way. I don’t care.”
“I do. You do whatever I say or I leave right now.”
She tilted her head. “Could you? Leave, I mean.”
He didn’t answer for a long moment, and then he shrugged. “I could try.”
He could, and she would let him. But they both knew where they would end up. Right back here on her bed or on the floor or wherever they landed with him inside her.
And then, to her absolute joy, he stripped off his tee.
Dark glorious muscles revealed to her hungry gaze. Broad shoulders, perfect flesh. Except for the scar on his face, there were no flaws. Not even a mole. Probably a benefit of being a shifter, she realized. Then he toed off his shoes and pushed down his jeans.
His penis sprang free, large and proud, and though she’d seen it before, she again marveled at his size. He was a big man everywhere, and her body was only average. But even as she had the thought, she knew they would fit. At this moment, she believed even her bones would adjust to accommodate him.
“Lie back,” he commanded.
She did. It took her a moment to scurry backward on the bed, but pretty soon she lay dead center, her hands spread at her sides, and her legs softening open though her knees still touched. He prowled closer to the bed. No other word for it, especially since she’d only flipped on the far light. That put him in silhouette as his dark form slipped through the shadows toward her and the bed.